Deskilling among Manufacturing Production Workers

Although four out of five manufacturing employees work in production occupations in most countries (as opposed to white collar occupations), there is little international evidence on how the transition to more capital intensive production methods has affected the demand for different groups of manufacturing production workers. In this article, I use new occupational wage and employment data to document a global decline in the relative demand for skilled production workers in manufacturing since the 1950s. They tended to work in craftsman occupations, and commanded wages even rivaling those of some white collar workers. However, the demand for manufacturing craftsmen decreased in countries of all income groups and regions over the following decades, and declining relative craftsmen wages and employment have been associated with increasing capital intensities of production. My findings reconcile conflicting characterizations of technological change throughout the 20th century as either `skill biased' or `deskilling', and suggest that the polarization of labor demand in manufacturing precedes ICT. They also point to a decreasing number of manufacturing jobs in which workers with little formal education can acquire significant marketable skills.